


The End of Infinity

by Thegaygumballmachine



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, F/F, LIKE A LOT OF ANGST, Missed Opportunities, does it count as character death if the character is already dead?, fucking useless lesbians, i fucking suck at tags you must know this by now, introspective?, zelda realizes things too late™️
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 23:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17171867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thegaygumballmachine/pseuds/Thegaygumballmachine
Summary: Zelda knows the taste of Diana’s lips.[In which Diana’s spirit stirs up some memories that Zelda tried very hard to keep buried.]





	The End of Infinity

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t the foggiest as to where this came from, but... happy solstice, ig?
> 
> Title from FOB’s The Last of the Real Ones.

The moment she gets in the door, Zelda can tell something is off.

 

She doesn’t even really have time to think about it - on instinct, she knows that a fundamental change has taken place since she was here last, and she curses herself for leaving Sabrina and Ambrose alone, even for a little while.

 

The energy of the house is different, sour, and she feels as if a bucket of ice has been poured down her back even before she sees the tree and the hearth. Panic sets in immediately, clouding her mind, making her thoughts blur together. She barely even registers what she says to Hilda, only knows that she has to protect the younger ones from what might be lurking in the darkest corners of the house. It terrifies her to imagine the ghouls that could have crept in while they were all so unguarded, so she doesn’t, doesn’t allow herself to think of the possibilities. She focuses only on what she will say to Sabrina, runs the words over thrice in her mind before she pushes the girl’s door open, frantic energy thrumming in her veins.

 

To say she’s taken aback by what she sees is a ridiculous understatement.

 

Diana stands atop a table in the middle of the room, circled on all sides by Sabrina’s Academy friends, and that is simply impossible, because Diana is dead, and-

 

Realizations dawn on her, one after another, but she can’t parse them just now, not when Diana looks heartbreakingly young and so radiantly beautiful, and she wears, of all things, her wedding dress. Zelda is made speechless by the curve of her lip, the sparkle in her eye; a look she never imagined she would see again, and certainly not directed at her.

 

“Diana,” she manages, and her shock filters into her voice, but something else does as well, something heavy and thick - she swallows against it, and her next breath comes sharp and shaking, laced in an old uncertainty. She prays that Sabrina won’t notice, prays that this secret will keep for a while longer yet as the spirit of her brother’s wife disappears in a flourish of cloth.

 

She stays like that for several moments more, stood stock still and watching the space Diana just occupied, and she only barely manages to come back to herself once things settle, to move again into strong, scolding Auntie Zee rather than the confused, longing woman she currently is at her core. She always has been good at compartmentalizing - it is merely the surprise of it, she tells herself, that keeps her from doing so flawlessly now. Sabrina begins to make her excuses, and she hates that she doesn’t care, hates that the intent doesn’t matter to her now that she’s seen Diana, resplendent and rosy and so very obviously the greater part of her niece.

 

_You look just like her,_ she thinks but doesn’t say. Instead she sends the sisters home, gathers her family in the parlor, and collects herself to play the role of their leader once more.

 

——

 

Zelda knows the taste of Diana’s lips.

 

It’s tangy and sweet and bitter at once, like orange liqueur edged in vanilla; there is something very permanent about the way she kisses, something very _mortal,_ and Zelda has never forgotten the cadence of her breath in the moments after, thinks she’ll always be able to recall with perfect clarity the unfocused look that comes to her eyes when she’s been properly debauched.

 

They only kissed the once - she was just Edward’s bosom friend back then, the idea of something more a mere shadow on the edge of her mind, and she came to the mortuary for the first time with an innocence of which Zelda longed to deprive her. She’d never _meant_ to kiss her, but that little half smile was so unnerving, and the set of her face said she knew so much more than she should, and Zelda simply couldn’t resist such a pretty picture, practically begging to be broken.

 

She doesn’t think about it often, not anymore, but she thinks about it tonight far more than is decent, worries over the scent and sound and exquisite, imperfect feel of Diana in her mind until she’s lost her breath in the memory.

 

——

 

She’s short with Sabrina in the morning, and she tries to regret it, but she is a near identical copy of her mother in indignation, and Zelda has to leave, has to use Leticia as an excuse to get away from it. Everything already feels like it’s imploding, and then the Yule Lads choose to make themselves known, and she thinks she might go mad.

 

A quiet, peaceful holiday was too much to hope for, she knows - what with Sabrina’s recently unlocked potential, she really couldn’t have expected anything less than the chaos that’s befallen the house, but she is also, in every way but the physical, a new mother, and she’s just so _tired._ She catches herself nearly falling asleep several times during the day, despite the constant state of uproar everyone is in, and it is eventually Hilda who sends her up to bed, forces her to rest while she cares for the baby.

 

“You’ll need all your strength for Gryla tonight,” she says, and the logic of it is too tempting to refuse. She dreams of the blonde curls and vanilla skin of a time gone by, and wakes up wishing she knew what Diana looked like in the rapture of her bliss.

 

It feels foreign and strange; never before has Zelda Spellman been known to pine for _anything,_ let alone a mortal woman who her own brother laid his claim to, and she can’t help but wonder if there’s a magical hand in this, someone unseen pulling her strings.

 

_You are a vision,_ she hears in her head, and it shocks her fully awake, but she is still perfectly, sorrowfully alone.

 

——

 

Diana is confidently cautious with Gryla, and her every word is chosen with careful deliberation. She has always wanted everything she says to have meaning, to leave behind an imprint on those who hear it, and she certainly does that now, leaves Zelda drowning in gratitude and something else barely tangible. She saves their household, saves Leticia, saves Zelda’s faith in many ways.

 

This is a ghost _._ A wisp of the woman she knew.

 

She leaves too soon, and Zelda terrifies herself with the strength of her regret for all the things she still, after all this time, left unsaid.

 

——

 

She takes the time to remember, after Diana is well and truly gone.

 

She remembers sitting at the front of their very Christian wedding ceremony, watching her walk the aisle in that _horrid_ dress to Edward, happier than she might have ever seen him, digging her nails into her own legs such that she nearly drew blood.

 

She remembers watching her swell with child, seeing her gain that glow, starting to plan things like baby clothes and nurseries and names as Edward fetched her one strange food after another and Hilda cooed about their little niece, growing strong and proud.

 

She remembers hearing the news about the flight, and can’t recall who she crumbled for, really; she only knows that she barely kept herself together in company, fell completely apart as soon as she found herself alone, and told herself vehemently that it was only because of Edward, because of all the years he lost.

 

——

 

She called Edward “Eddie”, and she called Zelda “Zee”.

 

She had a fondness for nicknames, for the intimacy of them - it made her so happy to have something different to call the people she enjoyed the most, something that set her apart from everyone else who came across them.

 

“Eddie” had always been Zelda’s, and she resented that for years, but she did secretly enjoy the shortening of her own name, the familiarity that came with the syllable. She scoffed and sighed and made her usual fuss, but Diana always was inclined to do whatever she wanted, and her cheer was, mercifully, less aggravating than Hilda’s.

 

It tortured Zelda to watch her fawn over her brother at the breakfast table, but no one would ever know that, not as long as she had _Le Monde_ and the promise of a cigarette to come.

 

She was so like Sabrina it physically hurts to think of.

 

——

 

She’s never properly mourned Diana, never allowed herself to care enough, but she does now - she mourns the depth of their lost opportunities, sends a prayer to Lilith that her spirit will find its peace.

 

She may have been Edward’s in the end, but in the way that all things of his ended up being, she was always, somehow, partly Zelda’s.


End file.
